Nigel Lawson, Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, listed the Thatcherite ideals as "free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, 'Victorian values' (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism".[3] Thatcherism is thus often compared to classical liberalism. Milton Friedman said that "Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a nineteenth-century Liberal".[6]

Thatcher herself stated in 1983: "I would not mind betting that if Mr Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party".[7] In the 1996 Keith Joseph memorial lecture, Thatcher argued: "The kind of Conservatism which he and I [...] favoured would be best described as 'liberal', in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr Gladstone, not of the latter day collectivists".[8] Thatcher once told Friedrich Hayek: "I know you want me to become a Whig; no, I am a Tory". Hayek believed "she has felt this very clearly".[9] The relationship between Thatcherism and liberalism is complicated. Thatcher's former Defence Secretary John Nott claimed that "it is a complete misreading of her beliefs to depict her as a nineteenth-century Liberal".[10]

As Ellen Meiksins Wood has argued, Thatcherite capitalism was compatible with traditional British political institutions. As Prime Minister, Thatcher did not challenge ancient institutions such as the monarchy or the House of Lords, but some of the most recent additions such as the trade unions.[11] Indeed, many leading Thatcherites, including Thatcher herself, went on to join the House of Lords, an honour which William Ewart Gladstone, for instance, had declined.[12] Thinkers closely associated with Thatcherism include Keith Joseph, Enoch Powell, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In an interview with Simon Heffer in 1996, Thatcher stated that the two greatest influences on her as Conservative leader had been Joseph and Powell, who were both "very great men".[13]

Thatcher was a strong critic of communism, Marxism and socialism. Biographer John Campbell reports that in July 1978 when asked by a Labour MP in Commons what she meant by socialism "she was at a loss to reply. What in fact she meant was Government support for inefficient industries, punitive taxation, regulation of the labour market, price controls — everything that interfered with the functioning of the free economy".[14]

A number of commentators have traced the origins of Thatcherism in post-war British politics. The historian Ewen Green claimed there was resentment of the inflation, taxation and the constraints imposed by the labour movement, which was associated with the so-called Buttskellite consensus in the decades before Thatcher came to prominence. Although the Conservative leadership accommodated itself to the Clement Attlee government's post-war reforms, there was continuous right-wing opposition in the lower ranks of the party, in right-wing pressure groups like the Middle Class Alliance and the People's League for the Defence of Freedom and later in think tanks like the Centre for Policy Studies. For example, in the 1945 general election the Conservative Party chairman Ralph Assheton had wanted 12,000 abridged copies of The Road to Serfdom (a book by the anti-socialist economist Friedrich Hayek later closely associated with Thatcherism),[15] taking up one-and-a-half tons of the party's paper ration, distributed as election propaganda.[16] The historian Dr. Christopher Cooper has also traced the formation of the monetarist economics at the heart of Thatcherism back to the resignation of Conservative Chancellor of the ExchequerPeter Thorneycroft in 1958.[17]

As early as 1950, Thatcher stated her acceptance of the consensus of the day about the welfare state, claiming the credit belonged to the Conservatives in a speech to the Conservative Association annual general meeting. Biographer Charles Moore states:

Neither at the beginning of her career nor when she was prime minister, did Margaret Thatcher ever reject the wartime foundations of the welfare state, whether in health, social policy or education. In this she was less radical than her critics or some of her admirers supposed. Her concern was to focus more on abuse of the system, on bureaucracy and union militancy, and on the growth of what later came to be called the dependency culture, rather than on the system itself.[18]

Thatcherism is often described as a libertarian ideology. Thatcher saw herself as creating a libertarian movement,[19][20] rejecting traditional Toryism.[21] Thatcherism is associated with libertarianism within the Conservative Party,[22] albeit one of libertarian ends achieved by using strong and sometimes authoritarian leadership.[23] British political commentator Andrew Marr has called libertarianism the "dominant, if unofficial, characteristic of Thatcherism".[24] Whereas some of her heirs, notably Michael Portillo and Alan Duncan, embraced this libertarianism, others in the Thatcherite movement such as John Redwood sought to become more populist.[25][26]

Some commentators have argued that Thatcherism should not be considered properly libertarian. Noting the tendency towards strong central government in matters concerning the trade unions and local authorities, Andrew Gamble summarised Thatcherism as "the free economy and the strong state".[27]Simon Jenkins accused the Thatcher government of carrying out a nationalisation of Britain.[28] Libertarian political theorist Murray Rothbard did not consider Thatcherism to be libertarian and heavily criticised Thatcher and Thatcherism stating that "Thatcherism is all too similar to Reaganism: free-market rhetoric masking statist content".[29]

Another important aspect of Thatcherism is the style of governance. Britain in the 1970s was often referred to as "ungovernable". Thatcher attempted to redress this by centralising a great deal of power to herself, as the Prime Minister, often bypassing traditional cabinet structures (such as cabinet committees). This personal approach also became identified with personal toughness at times such as the Falklands War, the IRA bomb at the Conservative conference and the miners' strike.[citation needed]

Sir Charles Powell, the Foreign Affairs Private Secretary to the Prime Minister (1984–1991 and 1996) described her style as such: "I've always thought there was something Leninist about Mrs Thatcher which came through in the style of government: the absolute determination, the belief that there's a vanguard which is right and if you keep that small, tightly knit team together, they will drive things through ... there's no doubt that in the 1980s, No. 10 could beat the bushes of Whitehall pretty violently. They could go out and really confront people, lay down the law, bully a bit".[30]

Thatcherism is associated with the economic theory of monetarism. In contrast to previous government policy, monetarism placed a priority on controlling inflation over controlling unemployment. According to monetarist theory, inflation is the result of there being too much money in the economy. It was claimed that the government should seek to control the money supply to control inflation. By 1979, it was not only the Thatcherites who were arguing for stricter control of inflation. The Labour Chancellor Denis Healey had already adopted some monetarist policies, such as reducing public spending and selling off the government's shares in BP.

Moreover, it has been argued that the Thatcherites were not strictly monetarist in practice. A common theme centres on the Medium Term financial Strategy, issued in the 1980 Budget, which consisted of targets for reducing the growth of the money supply in the following years. After overshooting many of these targets, the Thatcher government revised the targets upwards in 1982. Analysts have interpreted this as an admission of defeat in the battle to control the money supply. The economist C. F. Pratten claimed that "since 1984, behind a veil of rhetoric, the government has lost any faith it had in technical monetarism. The money supply, as measured by £M3, has been allowed to grow erratically, while calculation of the PSBR is held down by the ruse of subtracting the proceeds of privatisation as well as taxes from government expenditure. The principles of monetarism have been abandoned".[31]

Thatcherism is also associated with supply-side economics. Whereas Keynesian economics holds that the government should stimulate economic growth by increasing demand through increased credit and public spending, supply-side economists argue that the government should instead intervene only to create a free market by lowering taxes, privatising state industries and increasing restraints on trade unionism.[citation needed]

Reduction in the power of the trades unions was made gradually, unlike the approach of the Edward Heath government and the greatest single confrontation with the unions was the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) strike of 1984–1985, in which the miners' union was eventually defeated. There is evidence that this confrontation with the trade unions was anticipated by both the Conservative Party and the NUM. The outcome contributed to the resurgence of the power of capital over labour.[32]

Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly; if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind; and we are now reaping the whirlwind.[36]

Examples of this conservative morality in practice include the video nasties scare, where in reaction to a moral panic over the availability of a number of provocatively named horror films on video cassette she introduced state regulation of the British video market for the first time. Despite her association with social conservatism, Thatcher voted in 1966 to legalise homosexuality.[37] That same year, she also voted in support of legal abortion.[38] However, in the 1980s during her time as Prime Minister in the 1980s Thatcher's government enacted Section 28, a law that opposed promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and the promotion of the teaching of "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" in schools. The law was opposed by many gay rights advocates such as Stonewall and OutRage! and was later repealed by Tony Blair's Labour government in 2003.[39][40] However, Thatcher was one of only a handful of Conservatives to vote for the Sexual Offences Act 1967.[41]

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron later issued an official apology for previous Conservative policies on homosexuality, specifically the introduction of the controversial Section 28 laws from the 1980s, viewing past ideological views as "a mistake" with his own ideological direction.[42]

In May 1988, Thatcher gave an address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. In the address, Thatcher offered a theological justification for her ideas on capitalism and the market economy. She said "Christianity is about spiritual redemption, not social reform" and she quoted St. Paul by saying "If a man will not work he shall not eat". Choice played a significant part in Thatcherite reforms and Thatcher said that choice was also Christian, stating that Jesus Christ chose to lay down his life and that all individuals have the God-given right to choose between good and evil.

Whilst Thatcher was Prime Minister, she greatly embraced transatlantic relations with the U.S. President Ronald Reagan. She often publicly supported Reagan's policies even when other Western allies were not as vocal. For example, she granted permission for American planes to use British bases for raids on Libya and allowed American cruise missiles and Pershing missiles to be housed on British soil in response to Soviet deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles targeting Britain and other Western European nations.[43]

Towards the end of the 1980s, Thatcher (and so Thatcherism) became increasingly vocal in its opposition to allowing the European Community to supersede British sovereignty. In a famous 1988 Bruges speech, Thatcher declared: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels".

While Euroscepticism has for many become a characteristic of Thatcherism, Thatcher was far from consistent on the issue, only becoming truly Eurosceptic in the last years of her time as Prime Minister. Thatcher supported Britain's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973, campaigned for a "Yes" vote in the 1975 referendum[44] and signed the Single European Act in 1986.[45]

It is often claimed that the word "Thatcherism" was coined by cultural theorist Stuart Hall in a 1979 Marxism Today article,[46] However, this is not true as the phrase "Thatcherism" was first used by Tony Heath in an article he wrote that appeared in Tribune on 10 August 1973. Writing as Tribune's Education Correspondent, Heath wrote: "It will be argued that teachers are members of a profession which must not be influenced by political considerations. With the blight of Thatcherism spreading across the land that is a luxury that only the complacent can afford".[47][48] Although the term had in fact been widely used before then,[49] not all social critics have accepted the term as valid, with the High Tory journalist T. E. Utley believing that "[t]here is no such thing as Thatcherism".[50]

Utley contended that the term was a creation of Thatcher's enemies who wished to damage her by claiming that she had an inflexible devotion to a certain set of principles and also by some of her friends who had little sympathy for what he called "the English political tradition" because it facilitated "compromise and consensus". Utley argued that a free and competitive economy, rather than being an innovation of Thatcherism, was one "more or less permanent ingredient in modern Conservative philosophy":

It was on that principle that Churchill fought the 1945 election, having just read Hayek's Road to Serfdom. [...] What brought the Tories to 13 years of political supremacy in 1951 was the slogan 'Set the people free'. [...] There is absolutely nothing new about the doctrinal front that she presents on these matters. [...] As for 'privatisation', Mr. Powell proposed it in [...] 1968. As for 'property-owning democracy', I believe it was Anthony Eden who coined the phrase.[51]

In foreign policy, Utley claimed Thatcher's desire to restore British greatness did not mean "primarily a power devoted to the preservation of its own interests", but that she belonged "to that militant Whig branch of English Conservatism...her view of foreign policy has a high moral content". In practical terms, he claimed this expressed itself in her preoccupation in "the freedom of Afghanistan rather than the security of Ulster".[52]

Some leftist critics such as Anthony Giddens claim that Thatcherism was purely an ideology and argue that her policies marked a change which was dictated more by political interests than economic reasons:

Rather than by any specific logic of capitalism, the reversal was brought about by voluntary reductions in social expenditures, higher taxes on low incomes and the lowering of taxes on higher incomes. This is the reason why in Great Britain in the mid 1980s the members of the top decile possessed more than a half of all the wealth.[53] To justify this by means of economic "objectivities" would be an ideology. What is at play here are interests and power.[54]

The Conservative historian of Peterhouse, Maurice Cowling, also questioned the uniqueness of "Thatcherism". Cowling claimed that Thatcher used "radical variations on that patriotic conjunction of freedom, authority, inequality, individualism and average decency and respectability, which had been the Conservative Party's theme since at least 1886". Cowling further contended that the "Conservative Party under Mrs Thatcher has used a radical rhetoric to give intellectual respectability to what the Conservative Party has always wanted".[55]

Historians Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson have argued that by the 1970s Britons were keen about defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives. They demanded greater personal autonomy and self-determination and less outside control. They angrily complained that the establishment was withholding it. They argue this shift in concerns helped cause Thatcherism and was incorporated into Thatcherism's appeal.[56]

Critics of Thatcherism claim that its successes were obtained only at the expense of great social costs to the British population.[how?] There were nearly 3.3 million unemployed in Britain in 1984, compared to 1.5 million when she first came to power in 1979, though that figure had reverted to some 1.6 million by the end of 1990.

While credited with reviving Britain's economy, Thatcher also was blamed for spurring a doubling in the relative poverty rate. Britain's childhood-poverty rate in 1997 was the highest in Europe.[57] When she resigned in 1990, 28% of the children in Great Britain were considered to be below the poverty line, a number that kept rising to reach a peak of nearly 30% during the government of Thatcher's successor, John Major.[57] During her government, Britain's Gini coefficient reflected this growing difference, going from 0.25 in 1979 to 0.34 in 1990, at about which value it remained for the next 20 years, under both Conservative and Labour governments.[58]

The majority of Thatcher's reforms were retained by New Labour. In 2002, she is said to have regarded that as her greatest achievement.[59]

The extent to which one can say Thatcherism has a continuing influence on British political and economic life is unclear. In 2002, Peter Mandelson, a member of parliament belonging to the British Labour Party closely associated with Tony Blair, famously declared that "we are all Thatcherites now".[60]

In reference to modern British political culture, it could be said that a "post-Thatcherite consensus" exists, especially in regards to economic policy. In the 1980s, the now defunct Social Democratic Party adhered to a "tough and tender" approach in which Thatcherite reforms were coupled with extra welfare provision. Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992, initiated Labour's rightward shift across the political spectrum by largely concurring with the economic policies of the Thatcher governments. The New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were described as "neo-Thatcherite" by some on the left, since many of their economic policies mimicked those of Thatcher.[61]

Most of the major British political parties today accept the trade union legislation, privatisations and general free market approach to government that Thatcher's governments installed. At present, no major political party in the United Kingdom is committed to reversing the Thatcher government's reforms of the economy, although in the aftermath of the Great Recession from 2007 to 2012, the then Labour Party leader Ed Miliband had indicated he would support stricter financial regulation[62] and industry-focused policy[63] in a move to a more mixed economy. In 2011, Miliband declared his support for Thatcher's reductions in income tax on top earners, her legislation to change the rules on the closed shop and strikes before ballots as well as her introduction of Right to Buy, claiming Labour had been wrong to oppose these reforms at the time.[64]

Moreover, the United Kingdom's comparative macroeconomic performance has improved since the implementation of Thatcherite economic policies. Since Thatcher resigned as British Prime Minister in 1990, British economic growth was on average higher than the other large European economies (i.e. Germany, France and Italy). Additionally, since the beginning of the 2000s the United Kingdom has also experienced lower unemployment compared with some other big economies. Such an enhancement in relative macroeconomic performance is perhaps another reason for the apparent "Blatcherite" economic consensus, which has been present in modern UK politics for a number of years.[citation needed]

Tony Blair wrote in his 2010 autobiography A Journey that "Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period". He described Thatcher's efforts as "ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so" while also stating that "much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change".[65]

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's 1979 election victory, BBC conducted a survey of opinions which opened with the following comments:[66]

To her supporters, she was a revolutionary figure who transformed Britain's stagnant economy, tamed the unions and re-established the country as a world power. Together with US presidents Reagan and Bush, she helped bring about the end of the Cold War. But her 11-year premiership was also marked by social unrest, industrial strife and high unemployment. Her critics claim British society is still feeling the effect of her divisive economic policies and the culture of greed and selfishness they allegedly promoted.

^Heppell, Timothy (June 2002). "The ideological composition of the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1992–97". British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 4 (2): 299–324. doi:10.1111/1467-856X.t01-1-00006.

^"Resignation of Thatcher – Strident heroine of the corner shop who fought for hard-headed virtues". The Sunday Times. 25 November 1990.

^Marr, Andrew (3 January 1994). "Why unhappy British are yearning for days of order". The Straits Times.

^Norman Tebbit, "Back to the old traditional values", The Guardian Weekly, 24 November 1985, quoted in Robert Eccleshall, English Conservatism Since the Restoration: An Introduction and Anthology (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 247.

1.
Neoliberalism
–
Neoliberalism refers primarily to the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism. These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980, as such, neoliberalism shares many attributes with other contested concepts, including democracy. The definition and usage of the term have changed over time, in the 1960s, usage of the term neoliberal heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochets economic reforms in Chile, once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas reaction to development in Chiapas. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing, the impact of the global 2008–2009 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives. In 1938 at the Colloque Walter Lippmann, the term neoliberalism was proposed, among other terms, the colloquium defined the concept of neoliberalism as involving the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state. To be neoliberal meant advocating an economic policy with state intervention. Neoliberal state interventionism brought a clash with the opposing camp of classical liberals. Although Hayek had intellectual ties to the German neoliberals, his name was occasionally mentioned in conjunction with neoliberalism during this period due to his more pro-free market stance. During the military rule under Augusto Pinochet in Chile, opposition scholars took up the expression to describe the economic reforms implemented there, once this new meaning was established among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. Another center-left movement from modern American liberalism that used the term neoliberalism to describe its ideology formed in the United States in the 1970s, according to David Brooks, prominent neoliberal politicians included Al Gore and Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party of the United States. The neoliberals coalesced around two magazines, the New Republic and the Washington Monthly, the godfather of this version of neoliberalism was the journalist Charles Peters who in 1983 published A Neoliberals Manifesto. Neoliberal theory argues that a market will allow efficiency, economic growth, income distribution. Any state intervention to encourage these phenomena will worsen economic performance, yet the handbook argues to view the term as merely a pejorative or radical political slogan is to reduce its capacity as an analytic frame. If neoliberalism is to serve as a way of understanding the transformation of society over the last few decades then the concept is in need of unpacking. Other scholars note that neoliberalism is associated with the policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. There are several usages of the term that can be identified, As a development model

2.
Conservatism
–
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes retaining traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. The term, historically associated with right-wing politics, has since used to describe a wide range of views. There is no set of policies that are universally regarded as conservative, because the meaning of conservatism depends on what is considered traditional in a given place. Thus conservatives from different parts of the world—each upholding their respective traditions—may disagree on a range of issues. In contrast to the definition of conservatism, political theorists such as Corey Robin define conservatism primarily in terms of a general defense of social. In Great Britain, conservative ideas emerged in the Tory movement during the Restoration period, Toryism supported a hierarchical society with a monarch who ruled by divine right. Tories opposed the idea that sovereignty derived from the people, and rejected the authority of parliament, Robert Filmers Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, published posthumously in 1680 but written before the English Civil War of 1642–1651, became accepted as the statement of their doctrine. However, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 destroyed this principle to some degree by establishing a government in England. Faced with defeat, the Tories reformed their movement, now holding that sovereignty was vested in the three estates of Crown, Lords, and Commons rather than solely in the Crown, Toryism became marginalized during the long period of Whig ascendancy in the 18th century. Conservatives typically see Richard Hooker as the father of conservatism, along with the Marquess of Halifax, David Hume. Halifax promoted pragmatism in government, whilst Hume argued against political rationalism and utopianism, Burke served as the private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham and as official pamphleteer to the Rockingham branch of the Whig party. Together with the Tories, they were the conservatives in the late 18th century United Kingdom, Burkes views were a mixture of liberal and conservative. He supported the American Revolution of 1765–1783 but abhorred the violence of the French Revolution and he insisted on standards of honor derived from the medieval aristocratic tradition, and saw the aristocracy as the nations natural leaders. That meant limits on the powers of the Crown, since he found the institutions of Parliament to be better informed than commissions appointed by the executive and he favored an established church, but allowed for a degree of religious toleration. Burke justified the order on the basis of tradition, tradition represented the wisdom of the species and he valued community. Burke was a leading theorist in his day, finding extreme idealism an endangerment to broader liberties, despite their influence on future conservative thought, none of these early contributors were explicitly involved in Tory politics. Hooker lived in the 16th century, long before the advent of toryism, whilst Hume was an apolitical philosopher, Burke described himself as a Whig. Shortly after Burkes death in 1797, conservatism revived as a political force as the Whigs suffered a series of internal divisions

3.
Anti-communism
–
Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States, anti-communism has been an element of movements of many different positions, including capitalist, liberal, socialist, anarchist, and fascist viewpoints. They accuse communists of causing several famines, such as the Russian Famine of 1921, some anti-communists see both communism and fascism as totalitarianism, seeing similarity between the actions of communist and fascist governments. Opponents argue that communist parties that have come to power have tended to be intolerant of political opposition. Communist states have also accused of creating a new ruling class, with powers. Examples of left-wing critics of Communist states and parties are Boris Souveraine, Bayard Rustin, Irving Howe, the American Federation of Labor has always been strongly anti-Communist. The more leftist CIO purged its Communists in 1947 and has been staunchly anti-Communist ever since, in Britain, the Labour Party strenuously resisted Communist efforts to infiltrate its ranks and take control of locals in the 1930s. Although some anarchists describe themselves as communists, all anarchists criticize authoritarian Communist parties and states and they argue that Marxist concepts such as dictatorship of the proletariat and state ownership of the means of production are anathema to anarchism. Some anarchists criticize communism from an individualist point of view, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin debated with Karl Marx in the First International, arguing that the Marxist state is another form of oppression. He loathed the idea of a vanguard party ruling the masses from above, anarchists initially participated in, and rejoiced over, the 1917 revolution as an example of workers taking power for themselves. However, after the October revolution, it became evident that the Bolsheviks, what is needed is local construction by local forces … Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name. Many anarchists fought against Russian, Spanish and Greek Communists, many were killed by them, such as Lev Chernyi, Camillo Berneri, neither Marxs 10-point plan nor the rest of the manifesto say anything about who has the right to carry out the plan. Milton Friedman argued that the absence of economic activity makes it too easy for repressive political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers. Friedmans view was shared by Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Objectivists who follow Ayn Rand are strongly anti-Communist and this is demonstrated, they believe, by the comparative prosperity of free market and socialist economies. Objectivist Ayn Rand writes that communist leaders typically claim to work for the common good, many ex-communists have turned into anti-communists. Mikhail Gorbachev turned from a Communist into a social democrat, milovan Đilas, was a former Yugoslav Communist official, who became a prominent dissident and critic of Communism. Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish Communist who became a famous anti-communist, the God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists, who were writers and journalists

4.
Atlanticism
–
The term derives from the Atlantic Ocean that separates the two continents. In practice the philosophy of Atlanticism encourages active North American, particularly US, engagement in Europe and this manifested itself most strongly during the Second World War and in its aftermath through the establishment of various euro-Atlantic institutions, most importantly NATO and the Marshall Plan. Atlanticism varies in strength from region to region and country to country based on a variety of historical and cultural factors, Atlanticism is often considered to be particularly strong in eastern and central Europe, and the United Kingdom. Politically, it has tended to be associated most heavily and enthusiastically, Atlanticism often implies an affinity for American political or social culture as well as the historical bonds between the two continents. There is some tension between Atlanticism and continentalism on both sides of the Atlantic, with some people emphasising increased regional cooperation or integration over trans-Atlantic cooperation. However, the relationship between Atlanticism and North American or European integration is complex and they are not seen in opposition to one another by many commentators. Internationalism is the foreign policy belief combining both Atlanticism and continentalism, other international relationships have been increasingly emphasised, although the trans-Atlantic relationship is still arguably the most important in the world. Prior to the World Wars, European countries were preoccupied with creating colonial empires in Africa and Asia. The experience of having American and Canadian troops fighting with British, French, though the US adopted a more isolationist position between the wars, by the time of the Normandy landings the Allies were well integrated on all policies. Following the Second World War, the Western European countries were anxious to convince the US to remain engaged in European affairs to deter any aggression by the Soviet Union. After the end of the war, the relationship between the United States and Europe changed fundamentally, and made both sides less interested in the other. As a result, the relationship became less important strategically speaking. After the September 11,2001, attacks, NATO for the first time invoked Article 5, planes of NATOs multi-national AWACS unit patrolled the U. S. skies and European countries deployed personnel and equipment. However, the Iraq war caused fissures within NATO and the difference of opinion between the US led backers of the invasion and opponents strained the alliance. Some commentators, such as Robert Kagan questioned whether Europe and the United States had diverged to such a degree that their alliance was no longer relevant, Atlanticism is a belief in the necessity of cooperation between North America and Europe. The term can also be used as a shorthand for the security architecture. Supranational integration of the North Atlantic area had emerged as a focus of thinking among intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic already in the late 19th century. Although it was not known as Atlanticism at the time, they developed an approach coupling soft, the idea of an attractive nucleus union was the greatest soft power element, the empirical fact of the hegemonic global strength such a union would hold was the hard power element

5.
Capitalism
–
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, economists, political economists, and historians have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free market capitalism, welfare capitalism, different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. Most existing capitalist economies are mixed economies, which elements of free markets with state intervention. Capitalism has existed under many forms of government, in different times, places. Following the decline of mercantilism, mixed capitalist systems became dominant in the Western world, Capitalism has been criticized for prioritizing profit over social good, natural resources, and the environment, and that is a cause of inequality and economic instabilities. Supporters believe that it provides better products through competition, and creates strong economic growth, the term capitalist, meaning an owner of capital, appears earlier than the term capitalism. It dates back to the mid-17th century, capitalist is derived from capital, which evolved from capitale, a late Latin word based on caput, meaning head – also the origin of chattel and cattle in the sense of movable property. Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries in the sense of referring to funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, by 1283 it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm. It was frequently interchanged with a number of other words – wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property, the Hollandische Mercurius uses capitalists in 1633 and 1654 to refer to owners of capital. In French, Étienne Clavier referred to capitalistes in 1788, six years before its first recorded English usage by Arthur Young in his work Travels in France, David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, referred to the capitalist many times. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, used capitalist in his work Table Talk, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used the term capitalist in his first work, What is Property. To refer to the owners of capital, benjamin Disraeli used the term capitalist in his 1845 work Sybil. The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to the capitalistic system. And to the capitalist mode of production in Das Kapital, the use of the word capitalism in reference to an economic system appears twice in Volume I of Das Kapital, p.124, and in Theories of Surplus Value, tome II, p.493. Marx did not extensively use the form capitalism but instead those of capitalist, and capitalist mode of production, also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German-American socialist and abolitionist, used the phrase private capitalism in 1863. Capital has existed incipiently on a scale for centuries, in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities. Simple commodity exchange, and consequently simple commodity production, which are the basis for the growth of capital from trade, have a very long history

6.
Entrepreneurship
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What appears as a real opportunity ex ante might actually be a non-opportunity or one that cannot be actualized by entrepreneurs lacking the necessary business skills, financial or social capital. Traditionally, an entrepreneur has been defined as a person who starts, organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. Rather than working as an employee, an entrepreneur runs a business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a leader and innovator of new ideas. They act as the manager and oversee the launch and growth of an enterprise, Entrepreneurship is the process by which an individual identifies a business opportunity and acquires and deploys the necessary resources required for its exploitation. For Schumpeter, the changes and dynamic disequilibrium brought on by the innovating entrepreneur, the ‘norm’ of a healthy economy. Entrepreneurial spirit is characterized by innovation and risk-taking, for example, in the 2000s, the field of social entrepreneurship has been identified, in which entrepreneurs combine business activities with humanitarian, environmental or community goals. In the 2010s, entrepreneurship can be studied in college or university as part of the disciplines of management or business administration, Entrepreneur, is a loanword from French. First used in 1723, today the term entrepreneur implies qualities of leadership, initiative, economist Robert Reich has called team-building, leadership, and management ability essential qualities for the entrepreneur. Historically the study of entrepreneurship reaches back to the work in the late 17th and early 18th centuries of Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith, which was foundational to classical economics. In the 20th century, entrepreneurship was studied by Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s and other Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, the term entrepreneurship was coined around the 1920s, while the loan from French of the word entrepreneur dates to the 1850s. According to Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation, thus, creative destruction is largely responsible for long-term economic growth. The idea that leads to economic growth is an interpretation of the residual in endogenous growth theory. For Schumpeter, entrepreneurship resulted in new industries and in new combinations of currently existing inputs, Schumpeters initial example of this was the combination of a steam engine and then current wagon making technologies to produce the horseless carriage. In this case the innovation, the car, was transformational and it did not immediately replace the horse-drawn carriage, but in time, incremental improvements reduced the cost and improved the technology, leading to the modern auto industry. Despite Schumpeters early 20th-century contributions, traditional microeconomic theory did not formally consider the entrepreneur in its theoretical frameworks, in this treatment, the entrepreneur was an implied but unspecified actor, consistent with the concept of the entrepreneur being the agent of x-efficiency. For Schumpeter, the entrepreneur did not bear risk, the capitalist did, Schumpeter was of the opinion that entrepreneurs shift the Production Possibility Curve to a higher level using innovations. Cantillon emphasized the willingness of the entrepreneur to assume risk and to deal with uncertainty, thus, he draws attention to the function of the entrepreneur, and distinguishes clearly between the function of the entrepreneur and the owner who provides the money

7.
Euroscepticism
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Euroscepticism means criticism of the European Union. Some observers though prefer to understand opposition to and total rejection of the EU as Euroscepticism, traditionally, the main source of Euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state, and a desire to slow, halt or reverse integration within the EU. Other views often held by Eurosceptics include perceptions of a deficit in the European Union or a belief that the EU is too bureaucratic. A Eurobarometer survey of EU citizens in 2009 showed that support for membership of the EU was lowest in Latvia, the United Kingdom, by 2016, the countries viewing the EU most unfavourably were Greece, France, Spain and the UK. Euroscepticism is found in political parties across the spectrum, however. Trust in the EU and its institutions has declined strongly since a peak in 2007. In 2016, a referendum asking whether the United Kingdom either should remain a member of, or leave. While having some overlaps, Euroscepticism and anti-Europeanism are different, anti-Europeanism has always had a strong influence in American culture and American exceptionalism, which sometimes sees Europe on the decline or as a rising rival power, or both. Some aspects of euroscepticism in the United Kingdom have been mirrored by US authors, there can be considered to be several different types of Eurosceptic thought, which differ in the extent to which adherents reject European integration and in their reasons for doing so. Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart described two of these as hard and soft Euroscepticism, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament, typified by such parties as the United Kingdom Independence Party, is hard Eurosceptic. In western European EU member countries, hard Euroscepticism is currently a hallmark of many anti-establishment parties, some hard Eurosceptics such as UKIP prefer to call themselves Eurorealists rather than sceptics, and regard their position as pragmatic rather than in principle. I think theyre building an empire there, they want us to be a part of their empire, François Asselineau of the French Popular Republican Union has criticised the use of the term sceptic to describe hard Eurosceptics and would rather advocate the use of the term Euro opponent. Soft Euroscepticism is support for the existence of, and membership of, a form of European Union, some have claimed that there is no clear line between hard and soft euroscepticism. Some scholars consider the difference in terminology between hard and soft Euroscepticism inadequate to accommodate the large differences in terms of political agenda. Therefore, hard Euroscepticism has also referred to as Europhobia. Other alternative names for hard and soft Euroscepticism include withdrawalist respectively reformist Euroscepticism, about 43% of Europeans thought things were going in the wrong direction” in the EU, compared with 23% who thought things were going in the right direction. About 32% of EU citizens tend to trust the European Union as an institution, distrust of the EU was highest in Greece, Cyprus, Austria, France Germany, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. Overall, more respondents distrusted their own government than the EU, distrust of national government was highest in Greece, Slovenia, Portugal, Cyprus and France

8.
Individualism
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Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism, authoritarianism, communitarianism, Individualism makes the individual its focus and so starts with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation. Classical liberalism, existentialism, and anarchism are examples of movements that take the individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism thus involves the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization and it has also been used as a term denoting The quality of being an individual, individuality related to possessing An individual characteristic, a quirk. A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he rejected its collective idea of property. Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase ones happiness, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism, individuality is the state or quality of being an individual, a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. The individualist does not follow one particular philosophy, rather creates an amalgamation of elements of many, on a societal level, the individualist participates on a personally structured political and moral ground. Independent thinking and opinion is a trait of an individualist. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claims that his concept of general will in the contract is not the simple collection of individual wills. Societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly self-regarding behaviors, the principle of individuation, or principium individuationis, describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things. For Carl Jung, individuation is a process of transformation, whereby the personal and it is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place. Jung considered individuation to be the process of human development. Thus, the atom is replaced by a never-ending ontological process of individuation. Individuation is an incomplete process, always leaving a pre-individual left-over. The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation and also upon similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche, for Stiegler the I, as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to we, which is a collective individual. The I is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits, methodological individualism is the view that phenomena can only be understood by examining how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents

9.
Supply-side economics
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Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory that argues economic growth can be most effectively created by investing in capital and by lowering barriers on the production of goods and services. It was started by economist Robert Mundell during the Ronald Reagan administration, typical policy recommendations of supply-side economists are lower marginal tax rates and less government regulation. The term supply-side economics was thought, for time, to have been coined by journalist Jude Wanniski in 1975. Its use connotes the ideas of economists Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer, the Laffer curve is one of the main theoretical constructs of supply-side economics. However, the Laffer curve only measures the rate of taxation, not tax incidence, in addition, some studies have shown that tax cuts done in the US in the past several decades seldom recoup revenue losses and have minimal impact on GDP growth. It drew on a range of economic thought, particularly the Chicago School. Classical Liberals opposed taxes because they opposed government, taxation being the latters most obvious form and their claim was that each man had a right to himself and his property and therefore taxation was immoral and of questionable legal grounding. Supply-side economists, on the hand, argued that the alleged collective benefit provided the main impetus for tax cuts. As in classical economics, supply-side economics proposed that production or supply is the key to economic prosperity, john Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesianism, summarized Says Law as supply creates its own demand. He turned Says Law on its head in the 1930s by declaring that demand creates its own supply. S, monetary policy under Nixon in the 1970s. Wanniski advocated lower tax rates and a return to some kind of gold standard, in 1983, economist Victor Canto, a disciple of Arthur Laffer, published The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics. This theory focuses on the effects of tax rates on the incentive to work and save. While the latter focus on changes in the rate of growth in the long run. This led the supply-siders to advocate large reductions in income and capital gains tax rates to encourage allocation of assets to investment. Jude Wanniski and many advocate an zero capital gains rate. The increased aggregate supply would result in increased demand, hence the term Supply-Side Economics. Supply-side economics holds that increased taxation steadily reduces economic trade between economic participants within a nation and that it discourages investment, taxes act as a type of trade barrier or tariff that causes economic participants to revert to less efficient means of satisfying their needs. As such, higher taxation leads to lower levels of specialization, the idea is said to be illustrated by the Laffer curve

10.
Margaret Thatcher
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She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, and the first woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her The Iron Lady, a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics, as Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism. A research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959, Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and she became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies and she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 1984. Thatcher was re-elected for a term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge was widely unpopular and she resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a peerage as Baroness Thatcher which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking. Despite this, she managed to pre-record a eulogy to Ronald Reagan prior to his death, in 2013, she died of another stroke in London, at the age of 87. Always a controversial figure, she has described as one of the greatest and most influential politicians in British history. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925, in Grantham and her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops, Prior to the Second World War, in 1938 the Roberts family gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl escaping Nazi Germany. Thatcher was to describe this in her memoirs as among the significant events of her formative years, Alfred Roberts was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a Liberal family but stood as an Independent and he was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement, her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43, in her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin, even while working on chemistry, she was already thinking towards law and politics

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of …

Caricature of Max Stirner taken from a sketch by Friedrich Engels. Egoist philosopher Max Stirner has been called a proto-existentialist philosopher while at the same time is a central theorist of individualist anarchism

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime …

Late in the 17th century Treasury Ministers began to attend the Commons regularly. They were given a reserved place, called the Treasury Bench, to the Speaker's right where the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet members sit today.

The House of Commons early 19th century. The Loyal Opposition occupy the benches to the Speaker's left. Seated in the front, the leaders of the opposition form a "Shadow Government", complete with a salaried "Shadow Prime Minister" ready to assume office if the government falls or loses the next election.